COVID-19 Assistance is the name of the new official government application against coronavirus, which allows us to carry out a self-assessment test and monitor the evolution of the epidemic in Spain from a he alth point of view.
COVID-19 Assistance is an app for Android and iPhone, although it can be used in its browser version. For now it only works in the autonomous communities of Asturias, Cantabria, Canary Islands, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura, if we indicate another place it will not let us access.
And the application asks for personal data, including name, ID, date of birth and the place where we are Let's not forget that The BOE has approved geolocation during quarantine, to analyze whether the confinement is being complied with at a general level.
In addition to manually typing our address, COVID-19 Assistance requests access to GPS, something that in principle is only used to confirm if We are in the autonomous community that we indicate.
Once inside the app we will ask for the usual symptoms (fever, cough, shortness of breath) and if we have been in contact with people with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19.
Thanks to this we will be able to obtain up-to-date information without further saturating the he alth system, not hospitals and he alth centers, but also we will avoid making a phone call, which can take a long time to be answered.
Depending on the result, it will give us some orientations or others. If we do not show worrisome symptoms, it will show the recommendations to avoid catching the coronavirus, such as maintaining confinement at home and adopting social distancing and respiratory hygiene measures.
If we want to do the coronavirus test again we will have to wait 12 hours, so before sending any data they ask us to confirm that it is exact.
The COVID-19 Assistance app also includes advice for caregivers of the sick, with hygiene measures that prevent contagion within the home.
Being an official government app, it follows the directives of the Ministry of He alth and the associated autonomous communities, but it will be updated. For example, right now it recommends not using masks if we do not have the coronavirus, something that could change shortly.
Of course, in the case of the Community of Madrid, it refers us to the official CoronaMadrid website on the coronavirus, and the same happens if we are in the Basque Country or Catalonia, where they already have their own apps to contain the coronavirus.
Although we are talking about a much less intrusive app than those used in China or South Korea to monitor the population, it can be helpful in the midst of a he alth crisis. Actually, Open Coronavirus already exists to control citizens, created by Spanish volunteers, but the Government has preferred a less controversial alternative.
In fact, the WHO is also preparing WHO My He alth against the coronavirus, which will be a global app, without specific advice for Spain.
In any case, COVID-19 Assistance will be a useful app to contain the he alth emergency, if only because it allows access to information Reliable and up-to-date, avoiding saturating telephone numbers with information.
